Derek Sivers on Academic Success

Derek Sivers is the musician and entrepreneur behind CD Baby. CD Baby is a little online record store that sells albums by independent musicians. [In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one's life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.] This year he resigned as an employee, but remains owner (a la Tim Ferriss). Derek returned to his alma mater to deliver a speech to incoming first-year students titled...

Student Tools: Cornell Note Templates

This semester I have been facilitating breakout groups for the learning strategies course in my faculty. Last week, the session focused on reading and note-taking. One of the activities had the students make a Cornell note on a section of the course’s textbook. When I asked if any of them had heard of Cornell notes before, 0 of 19 hands went up. The Cornell note-taking system is a widely-used notetaking system devised...

Office 2.0 Conference Discount for Our Readers

Ismael Ghalimi of IT|Redux fame and producer of the Office 2.0 Conference emailed me with a $100 discount for any GearFire readers wishing to attend this year. The conference runs in San Francisco from September 3-5. This year’s theme is enterprise adoption and the opening keynote will be given by David Allen with other notable speakers including Robert Scoble. The Office 2.0 Conference is a collective experiment...

GTD Mastery 100: Step 23

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post. Step 23 to GTD Mastery is: I attend a weekly productivity group centered around the GTD methods. Image: Ted Patrick Or not…. The number of people I’ve talked to about GTD can be counted on two hands (not including the readers here at GearFire who I’m grateful for sticking around despite another vanishing act on my part). Edit: Feel free to join...

GTD Mastery 100: Step 15

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post. Step 15 to GTD Mastery is: I have a paper file system which is fun and fast to use, perhaps using an automatic labeler. A couple of months ago, I put out a call for help to our readers for the creation of my paper file system. Many of the responses advocated a paperless system. After weighing my options, I chose the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner (Mac version...